Polish Russian relations turn sour

By Aussiegirl

The NYT has a story about increasingly poor relations between Poland and Russia. As the article points out, most of this is due to Russia's inability to carve out a post-war identity for itself. Is it a former communist totalitarian dictatorship which is in the process of reforming itself? Or is it a state which is stung by its sudden demise as a world superpower and still seeks to see enemies where none exist while swaggering and bullying instead of carrying on normal diplomatic relationships.

Old habits die hard. As the Polish foreign minister said -- they continue to seek enemies -- and find them.

Clearly, the present bad state of relations between Russia and Poland has plenty of historical precedents. Still, relations between the nations are as bad as they ever have been since the collapse of the Soviet bloc in 1989.

An exchange during a recent visit to Warsaw by Gleb Pawlowski, an adviser to President Vladimir Putin of Russia, reported by the Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza, indicated the nastiness of the mood in both countries.

"Poles talk about Russians the way anti-Semites talk about Jews," Pawlowski said.

Poland's foreign minister, Adam Daniel Rotfeld, replied, "You are looking for an enemy and you find it in Poland."

. . . "It's not a result of Polish policy but of the internal processes of Russia," Jacek Cichocki, director of the Polish Center for Eastern Studies, a research group attached to the Polish Foreign Ministry, said while explaining, very much from the Polish perspective, the poor state of relations.

Analysts seem to agree that the immediate cause of tension was the lead role played by Poland in the Ukrainian crisis of late last year, when the Polish president, Aleksander Kwasniewski, clearly sided against the Russian-supported presidential candidate and with the Orange Revolution of Viktor Yushchenko.

As the Poles see it - and the Poles contend that, for obvious reasons, they have a special understanding of Russia - Ukraine's reorientation toward the European Union is a major, even historic additional increment in Russia's steady loss of influence in its own region, a loss of influence that began with the success of Solidarity in Poland in 1989.

. . . Polish analysts attribute what they regard as Russia's bad behavior, especially over Ukraine, to its failure to carve out a post-Cold War identity for itself. At the same time, while the Russians are tempted to recognize the EU and its expansion east as an economic opportunity, they see it as a danger, especially to Russian prestige.

"The emotion connected with the EU's enlargement is bigger than their pragmatic thinking," Cichocki said, predicting that it would be a long time before Russia stopped seeing a vibrant and democratic Poland as a threat.